Death Valley's 113°: hottest April temperature on record in U.S.

An unprecedented April heat wave brought a second day of sizzling temperatures to the Western U.S. yesterday, where temperatures ranging 20 - 30 degrees above normal have toppled numerous all-time April heat records. Nearly every weather station in the Inter-mountain West has broken, tied, or come within 1 - 2 °F of their all-time record April heat record since Sunday. Most notably, the 113°F measured at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, California on Sunday, April 22 was tied for the hottest April temperature ever recorded in the U.S. According to wunderground weather historian Christopher C. Burt, the hottest reliable April temperature ever measured in the U.S. was 113°F in Parker, Arizona in 1898. A 113°F reading was also taken at Catarina, Texas in April 1984, and at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley on April 24, 1946. A hotter 118°F reading measured at Volcano Springs, CA in April 1898 is considered unreliable, since we don't know much about the exposure conditions or if the thermometers were even in shelters at remote California desert stations back in the 1880s and 1890s. The previous hottest April day in Death Valley was 111°F. Yesterday, the high temperature in Death Valley "cooled off" to 110°F, merely the fourth highest April temperature ever measured there. The heat wave peaked Sunday and Monday, and temperatures will be closer to normal for the remainder of the week.

Figure 1. All-time heat records for the month of April were set at 56 stations April 21 - 23, including at seven major cities. Image taken from wunderground's new extremes page.

As is often the case when a major Nor'easter is affecting the Eastern U.S., the record-breaking heat is due to a contortion of the jet stream that has created a strong ridge of high pressure over the Western U.S. Wunderground's extremes page lists 56 stations in the West in the past four days that have tied or broken all-time heat records for the month of April, including:

Phoenix, Arizona: 105°F (previous 105° April temperatures occurred on 4/20/1989 and 4/29/1992) Las Vegas, Nevada: 99°F (tying old record set 4/30/1981)Reno, NV: 90° (old record 89° 4/30/1981)Elko, NV: 87° (old record 86° 4/30/1981). This also beat the previous so-warm-so-early-in-the-season record by 4°Ely, NV: 84° (old record 82° 4/28/1992)Winnemucca, NV: 90° (tying old record set 4/30/1981)Grand Junction, CO: 89° (tying all-time April record also set on 4/29 and 4/30, 1992)

Boise, ID (91°) and Salt Lake City (88°) both came within 1°F of their record April max.

Late-season Nor'easter winding downThe powerful late-season Nor'easter that brought snow, high winds, and heavy rains to the Northeast yesterday is winding down as it moves northwestwards into Canada. The storm brought an unusual amount of snow for so late in the season to western Pennsylvania, western New York, and the higher elevations in West Virginia. An earlier report posted by the NWS of 23.7” at Laurel Summit, Pennsylvania (elevation 2,770’) has now been scaled back to just 13.7”, according to the latest NWS Storm Summary. Many other higher-elevation locations saw snowfall amounts in the 6 - 12 inch range. Snow amounts were considerably lower in the major cities of the region; Buffalo, New York got 0.9", Rochester, New York, 2.8", and Erie, Pennsylvania, 0.5". The wet, heavy snow fell on regions where trees had already come into leaf, thanks to the surprise "Summer in March" heat wave that brought 80° temperatures to the Northeast over a month ago. High winds that accompanied the heavy snow caused extensive tree damage and power outages to at least 75,000 people in the region. However, the storm may have done more good than harm--widespread rainfall amounts of 2 - 4 inches occurred across Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Southeast New York, which is under moderate to severe drought. Rainfall deficits in the region were generally 5 - 10 inches, so the Nor'easter's rains will make a significant dent in the drought. Wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt has updated his post on Record Late Season Snowfalls with information from this storm.

Quoting GeorgiaStormz:I am bored of the weather this week.So i guess it is back to the learning table.How can you calculate the exact temperature and humidity etc necessary to break a cap given the cap strength and CAPE values.This might be difficult since CAPE is related to temperaturea and humidity.

It depends.

Most of the time the cap breaks due to extreme surface heating, strong boundaries/convergence, and upper forcing.

Quoting Tribucanes:Maybe space exploration to make the rich richer is the perfect answer. Just send the entire 1%ers on a one way trip. "To the moon Batman!!!" Oh wait, they own everything and have all the power; but one can dream can't they?

You are an idiot. Press ! and you're gone.

Edit: He is not stating his opinion he is trying to start an argument. Look at how long he has been on the blog. Most likely a troll.

Maybe space exploration to make the rich richer is the perfect answer. Just send the entire 1%ers on a one way trip. "To the moon Batman!!!" Oh wait, they own everything and have all the power; but one can dream can't they?

I am bored of the weather this week.So i guess it is back to the learning table.How can you calculate the exact temperature and humidity etc necessary to break a cap given the cap strength and CAPE values.This might be difficult since CAPE is related to temperaturea and humidity.

Quoting hydrus: I think its o.k. to use your imagination and be creative, but going into space to mine what would have to be a very lucrative product to be profitable even for ten billionaires sounds risky. Small missions can set a company back billions of dollars because of some tiny mistake..Precarious investment to say the least.

Well that's my point, I find nothing wrong with creativity, but what's going on there is living the fantasy. Just as I enjoy seeing Batman, but that doesn't mean I will attempt to go out and actually be Batman, lol

That's all associated with our next cold front which just might give New England another Nor'easter by Tuesday/Wednesday of next week!

91L is history according to NOAA. Plus the MJO is expected to sink into the COD until at least May 5th. Thereafter, it will emerge up into quadrant 8 by the following week(6-12th). So I'll only give Orlando a 20% chance of rain on Sunday/40% on Monday of next week before clearing things out Tuesday onward with low humidity.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this moisture surge moving towards Florida from the Caribbean. You can see it on the 84 hour water vapor forecast model....Link

That's all associated with our next cold front which just might give New England another Nor'easter by Tuesday/Wednesday of next week!

91L is history according to NOAA. Plus the MJO is expected to sink into the COD until at least May 5th. Thereafter, it will emerge up into quadrant 8 by the following week(6-12th). So I'll only give Orlando a 20% chance of rain on Sunday/40% on Monday of next week before clearing things out Tuesday onward with low humidity.

Quoting bappit:"We're in this for decades. But it's not a charity. And we'll make money from the beginning."

How do they make money from the beginning?

Earth observation. And if they plan on using spacex's launching platform, or something similar, it might be far cheaper to get to space that in the past.

The mining part might be tough, but they talked about fuel depots. they mentioned the cost of hauling water up to ISS. If they hit a comet or one time of asteroid, they propose to probably extract water and either refine it for fuel (h) + O2.

Yep, I mean, just look who is involved, you know if James Cameron is involved it might be a bit of an issue. If billionaires think they can just start going on space adventures we are going to start hearing about wasted lives in space, lol. Seriously, some of these people still think Carbon emissions don't matter. I'm not trying to generalize but accurate science often isn't upheld in the world of the very rich. Many times for them they are used to fantasy living so they think in a fantasy way as well regarding science.

I think its o.k. to use your imagination and be creative, but going into space to mine what would have to be a very lucrative product to be profitable even for ten billionaires sounds risky. Small missions can set a company back billions of dollars because of some tiny mistake..Precarious investment to say the least.

Quoting hydrus:We already have. They use a special type of radar to keep the space station and satellites from getting slammed by space junk we have left up there from previous missions...We are on a roll...:)

Quoting hydrus: Lol..I know, they cannot get the abundant natural resources here on Earth without making a mess, nevermind going into space and doing it. And your right space is extremely dangerous to humans and the equipment.

Yep, I mean, just look who is involved, you know if James Cameron is involved it might be a bit of an issue. If billionaires think they can just start going on space adventures we are going to start hearing about wasted lives in space, lol. Seriously, some of these people still think Carbon emissions don't matter. I'm not trying to generalize but accurate science often isn't upheld in the world of the very rich. Many times for them they are used to fantasy living so they think in a fantasy way as well regarding science.

Sounds like a bad idea, apparently some people like science fiction better than real science. What they aren't thinking thoroughly is that it would cost more money to build and maintain a craft, fly up to the asteroid and back, than the profit from mining the asteroid.

The problem is with all the video games and movies about space travel and space flight, people get this idea that long distance space flight is easier than it is. It's exceedingly more expensive and dangerous in real science as apposed to science fiction.

Granted technology is advancing quickly, but even still, the obstacles ahead are still very great. Its more likely we will achieve A.I. and will have intelligent robots walking around and nano-bots that scrub peoples cells to keep them alive before we reach long distance space travel, and bases on other planets/systems.

Space is just not as easy as science fiction makes it sound, even with the rapid increase in technology today.

I believe 2 major inventions need to exist before long distance space travel and human contact on other planets: nuclear fusion and some sort of warp drive.

Lol..I know, they cannot get the abundant natural resources here on Earth without making a mess, nevermind going into space and doing it. And your right space is extremely dangerous to humans and the equipment.

WEAK HEIGHT RISES WILL OVERSPREAD THE MID MS/OH VALLEY REGIONWEDNESDAY PRIOR TO SHORT-WAVE TROUGH THAT WILL DIG SEWD INTO THEGREAT LAKES LATE. EARLY IN THE PERIOD LOW LEVEL WARM ADVECTION WILLBE FOCUSED OVER THE UPPER MS VALLEY AHEAD OF SFC LOW OVER SWRN MNAND THIS SHOULD PROVE RESPONSIBLE FOR EARLY MORNING CONVECTION. GIVEN THE PRESENCE OF HEIGHT RISES ACROSS THIS REGION AND THELIKELIHOOD THAT A STRONG CAP WILL BE PRESENT ACROSS THE MID MSVALLEY...WARM ADVECTION SHOULD PROVE INSTRUMENTAL IN CONVECTIVEDEVELOPMENT THROUGH THE PERIOD. LATEST MODEL GUIDANCE STRONGLYSUPPORTS THE IDEA THAT WARM SECTOR TSTM DEVELOPMENT WILL BENEGLIGIBLE OR SEVERELY RETARDED DURING THE PERIOD AS WLY FLOW LIMITSDEEPER UPDRAFTS. FOR THIS REASON IT APPEARS ASCENT NORTH-EAST OFRETREATING WARM FRONT WILL DRIVE ELEVATED CONVECTION SEWD ALONG ACORRIDOR FROM SRN WI INTO IL/IND DURING THE DAY. LATEST SHORT RANGEGUIDANCE APPEARS TO BE OVERESTIMATING LOW LEVEL MOISTURE RETURN INTOTHIS REGION WITH THE 12Z NAM SUGGESTING MID 60S DEW POINTS WILLRETURN INTO THE WARM FRONTAL ZONE. THIS IS LIKELY TOO HIGH AS TRUEMID 60S DEW POINTS ARE LIMITED TO DEEP SOUTH TX ATTM. EVENSO...STEEP MID LEVEL LAPSE RATES DO SUGGEST TRANSITORY CLUSTERS OFELEVATED THUNDERSTORMS COULD PRODUCE HAIL AS THEY SPREAD TOWARD THEOH VALLEY INTO THE EVENING HOURS. IT/S NOT ENTIRELY CLEAR WHETHERBOUNDARY LAYER HEATING WILL BE SUFFICIENT FOR SFC-BASED CONVECTIONACROSS SRN IA/NRN MO AS WEAK CONVERGENCE AND THE AFOREMENTIONEDSTRONG CAP SHOULD BE NOTED.

Yeah I noticed it also... I mean I know what they meant and the word is used correctly and all but they really couldn't have found an alternative?

Quoting hydrus:The plan is to tap raw resources from asteroids that pass near Earth

Details have been emerging of the plan by billionaire entrepreneurs to mine asteroids for their resources.

The multi-million-dollar plan would use robotic spacecraft to squeeze chemical components of fuel and minerals such as platinum and gold out of the rocks.

The founders include film director and explorer James Cameron as well as Google's chief executive Larry Page and its executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

They even aim to create a fuel depot in space by 2020.

However, several scientists have responded with scepticism, calling the plan daring, difficult and highly expensive.

They struggle to see how it could be cost-effective, even with platinum and gold worth nearly £35 per gram ($1,600 an ounce). An upcoming Nasa mission to return just 60g (two ounces) of material from an asteroid to Earth will cost about $1bn.

The inaugural step, to be achieved in the next 18 to 24 months, would be launching the first in a series of private telescopes that would search for asteroid targets rich in resources. The intention will be to open deep-space exploration to private industry.James Cameron Backers of the venture include James Cameron who recently dived to the deepest place on Earth

Within five to 10 years, however, the company expects to progress from selling observation platforms in orbit around Earth to prospecting services. It plans to tap some of the thousands of asteroids that pass relatively close to Earth and extract their raw materials.

The company, known as Planetary Resources, is also backed by space tourism pioneer Eric Anderson, X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis, Ross Perot Jr, son of the former US presidential candidate, and veteran astronaut Tom Jones.

The founders of the venture are to give further details in a press conference on Tuesday.Long game

"We have a long view. We're not expecting this company to be an overnight financial home run. This is going to take time," Eric Anderson told the Reuters news agency.

The billionaires are hoping that the real financial returns, which are decades away, will come from mining asteroids for platinum group metals and rare minerals.

"If you look back historically at what has caused humanity to make its largest investments in exploration and in transportation, it has been going after resources, whether it's the Europeans going after the spice routes or the American settlers looking toward the west for gold, oil, timber or land," Mr Diamandis explained.

Water from asteroids could be broken down in space to liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for rocket fuel. Water is very expensive to get off the ground so the plan is to take it from an asteroid to a spot in space where it can be converted into fuel.

From there, it could be shipped to Earth orbit for refueling commercial satellites or spacecraft.

"A depot within a decade seems incredible. I hope there will be someone to use it," Dr Andrew Cheng, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory told the Associated Press.

"And I have high hopes that commercial uses of space will become profitable beyond Earth orbit. Maybe the time has come."

Prof Jay Melosh from Purdue University said that the costs were just too high, calling space exploration "a sport that only wealthy nations, and those wishing to demonstrate their technical prowess, can afford to indulge."

Eric Anderson, who co-founded the space tourism firm Space Adventures, said he was used to sceptics.

"Before we started launching people into space as private citizens, people thought that was a pie-in-the-sky idea," He said.

"We're in this for decades. But it's not a charity. And we'll make money from the beginning."

Sounds like a bad idea, apparently some people like science fiction better than real science. What they aren't thinking thoroughly is that it would cost more money to build and maintain a craft, fly up to the asteroid and back, than the profit from mining the asteroid.

The problem is with all the video games and movies about space travel and space flight, people get this idea that long distance space flight is easier than it is. It's exceedingly more expensive and dangerous in real science as apposed to science fiction.

Granted technology is advancing quickly, but even still, the obstacles ahead are still very great. Its more likely we will achieve A.I. and will have intelligent robots walking around and nano-bots that scrub peoples cells to keep them alive before we reach long distance space travel, and bases on other planets/systems.

Space is just not as easy as science fiction makes it sound, even with the rapid increase in technology today.

I believe 2 major inventions need to exist before long distance space travel and human contact on other planets: nuclear fusion and some sort of warp drive.

Quoting VR46L:Thank you for the blog It made interesting reading ,from reading it I understand that there was as hot a temperature recorded in 1898.Now that is really interesting.

You appear not to understand, but rather to misunderstand; Dr. Masters wrote that that reading was "... considered unreliable, since we don't know much about the exposure conditions or if the thermometers were even in shelters at remote California desert stations back in the 1880s and 1890s".

Quoting hydrus:The plan is to tap raw resources from asteroids that pass near Earth

Details have been emerging of the plan by billionaire entrepreneurs to mine asteroids for their resources.

The multi-million-dollar plan would use robotic spacecraft to squeeze chemical components of fuel and minerals such as platinum and gold out of the rocks.

The founders include film director and explorer James Cameron as well as Google's chief executive Larry Page and its executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

They even aim to create a fuel depot in space by 2020.

However, several scientists have responded with scepticism, calling the plan daring, difficult and highly expensive.

They struggle to see how it could be cost-effective, even with platinum and gold worth nearly £35 per gram ($1,600 an ounce). An upcoming Nasa mission to return just 60g (two ounces) of material from an asteroid to Earth will cost about $1bn.

The inaugural step, to be achieved in the next 18 to 24 months, would be launching the first in a series of private telescopes that would search for asteroid targets rich in resources. The intention will be to open deep-space exploration to private industry.James Cameron Backers of the venture include James Cameron who recently dived to the deepest place on Earth

Within five to 10 years, however, the company expects to progress from selling observation platforms in orbit around Earth to prospecting services. It plans to tap some of the thousands of asteroids that pass relatively close to Earth and extract their raw materials.

The company, known as Planetary Resources, is also backed by space tourism pioneer Eric Anderson, X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis, Ross Perot Jr, son of the former US presidential candidate, and veteran astronaut Tom Jones.

The founders of the venture are to give further details in a press conference on Tuesday.Long game

"We have a long view. We're not expecting this company to be an overnight financial home run. This is going to take time," Eric Anderson told the Reuters news agency.

The billionaires are hoping that the real financial returns, which are decades away, will come from mining asteroids for platinum group metals and rare minerals.

"If you look back historically at what has caused humanity to make its largest investments in exploration and in transportation, it has been going after resources, whether it's the Europeans going after the spice routes or the American settlers looking toward the west for gold, oil, timber or land," Mr Diamandis explained.

Water from asteroids could be broken down in space to liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for rocket fuel. Water is very expensive to get off the ground so the plan is to take it from an asteroid to a spot in space where it can be converted into fuel.

From there, it could be shipped to Earth orbit for refueling commercial satellites or spacecraft.

"A depot within a decade seems incredible. I hope there will be someone to use it," Dr Andrew Cheng, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory told the Associated Press.

"And I have high hopes that commercial uses of space will become profitable beyond Earth orbit. Maybe the time has come."

Prof Jay Melosh from Purdue University said that the costs were just too high, calling space exploration "a sport that only wealthy nations, and those wishing to demonstrate their technical prowess, can afford to indulge."

Eric Anderson, who co-founded the space tourism firm Space Adventures, said he was used to sceptics.

"Before we started launching people into space as private citizens, people thought that was a pie-in-the-sky idea," He said.

"We're in this for decades. But it's not a charity. And we'll make money from the beginning."

Fire at Deepwater Horizon rig The disaster was the worst US offshore oil spill

The US justice department has filed the first criminal charges linked to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

A former BP engineer was arrested on charges of intentionally destroying evidence.

Kurt Mix of Katy, Texas, faces two counts of obstruction of justice.

He is accused of trying to delete text messages between himself and a supervisor, in October 2010, containing details about how attempts to cap the leaking well were going.

In a sworn affidavit, FBI special agent Barbara O'Donnell said Mr Mix had "deleted numerous electronic records relating to the Deepwater Horizon disaster response, including records concerning the amount of oil potentially flowing from the well, after being repeatedly informed of his obligation to maintain such records".

Mr Mix, 50, was involved in some of BP's attempts to cap the well, including the unsuccessful Top Kill efforts in May 2010.

Prosecutors say he deleted messages that indicated Top Kill was failing at a time when BP officials were saying publicly that it was broadly proceeding according to plan.

Mr Mix resigned from BP earlier in 2012.

In a statement, BP said it "had clear policies requiring preservation of evidence in this case and has undertaken substantial and ongoing efforts to preserve evidence".

The justice department said Mr Mix would make his first appearance in a Houston federal court later on Tuesday.

The Deepwater Horizon rig, which had been leased by BP, exploded on 20 April 2010, killing 11 workers and eventually spilling more than 200 million gallons of crude oil.

Details have been emerging of the plan by billionaire entrepreneurs to mine asteroids for their resources.

The multi-million-dollar plan would use robotic spacecraft to squeeze chemical components of fuel and minerals such as platinum and gold out of the rocks.

The founders include film director and explorer James Cameron as well as Google's chief executive Larry Page and its executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

They even aim to create a fuel depot in space by 2020.

However, several scientists have responded with scepticism, calling the plan daring, difficult and highly expensive.

They struggle to see how it could be cost-effective, even with platinum and gold worth nearly £35 per gram ($1,600 an ounce). An upcoming Nasa mission to return just 60g (two ounces) of material from an asteroid to Earth will cost about $1bn.

The inaugural step, to be achieved in the next 18 to 24 months, would be launching the first in a series of private telescopes that would search for asteroid targets rich in resources. The intention will be to open deep-space exploration to private industry.James Cameron Backers of the venture include James Cameron who recently dived to the deepest place on Earth

Within five to 10 years, however, the company expects to progress from selling observation platforms in orbit around Earth to prospecting services. It plans to tap some of the thousands of asteroids that pass relatively close to Earth and extract their raw materials.

The company, known as Planetary Resources, is also backed by space tourism pioneer Eric Anderson, X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis, Ross Perot Jr, son of the former US presidential candidate, and veteran astronaut Tom Jones.

The founders of the venture are to give further details in a press conference on Tuesday.Long game

"We have a long view. We're not expecting this company to be an overnight financial home run. This is going to take time," Eric Anderson told the Reuters news agency.

The billionaires are hoping that the real financial returns, which are decades away, will come from mining asteroids for platinum group metals and rare minerals.

"If you look back historically at what has caused humanity to make its largest investments in exploration and in transportation, it has been going after resources, whether it's the Europeans going after the spice routes or the American settlers looking toward the west for gold, oil, timber or land," Mr Diamandis explained.

Water from asteroids could be broken down in space to liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for rocket fuel. Water is very expensive to get off the ground so the plan is to take it from an asteroid to a spot in space where it can be converted into fuel.

From there, it could be shipped to Earth orbit for refueling commercial satellites or spacecraft.

"A depot within a decade seems incredible. I hope there will be someone to use it," Dr Andrew Cheng, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory told the Associated Press.

"And I have high hopes that commercial uses of space will become profitable beyond Earth orbit. Maybe the time has come."

Prof Jay Melosh from Purdue University said that the costs were just too high, calling space exploration "a sport that only wealthy nations, and those wishing to demonstrate their technical prowess, can afford to indulge."

Eric Anderson, who co-founded the space tourism firm Space Adventures, said he was used to sceptics.

"Before we started launching people into space as private citizens, people thought that was a pie-in-the-sky idea," He said.

"We're in this for decades. But it's not a charity. And we'll make money from the beginning."

WEAK HEIGHT RISES WILL OVERSPREAD THE MID MS/OH VALLEY REGION WEDNESDAY PRIOR TO SHORT-WAVE TROUGH THAT WILL DIG SEWD INTO THE GREAT LAKES LATE. EARLY IN THE PERIOD LOW LEVEL WARM ADVECTION WILL BE FOCUSED OVER THE UPPER MS VALLEY AHEAD OF SFC LOW OVER SWRN MN AND THIS SHOULD PROVE RESPONSIBLE FOR EARLY MORNING CONVECTION. GIVEN THE PRESENCE OF HEIGHT RISES ACROSS THIS REGION AND THE LIKELIHOOD THAT A STRONG CAP WILL BE PRESENT ACROSS THE MID MS VALLEY...WARM ADVECTION SHOULD PROVE INSTRUMENTAL IN CONVECTIVE DEVELOPMENT THROUGH THE PERIOD. LATEST MODEL GUIDANCE STRONGLY SUPPORTS THE IDEA THAT WARM SECTOR TSTM DEVELOPMENT WILL BE NEGLIGIBLE OR SEVERELY RETARDED DURING THE PERIOD AS WLY FLOW LIMITS DEEPER UPDRAFTS. FOR THIS REASON IT APPEARS ASCENT NORTH-EAST OF RETREATING WARM FRONT WILL DRIVE ELEVATED CONVECTION SEWD ALONG A CORRIDOR FROM SRN WI INTO IL/IND DURING THE DAY. LATEST SHORT RANGE GUIDANCE APPEARS TO BE OVERESTIMATING LOW LEVEL MOISTURE RETURN INTO THIS REGION WITH THE 12Z NAM SUGGESTING MID 60S DEW POINTS WILL RETURN INTO THE WARM FRONTAL ZONE. THIS IS LIKELY TOO HIGH AS TRUE MID 60S DEW POINTS ARE LIMITED TO DEEP SOUTH TX ATTM. EVEN SO...STEEP MID LEVEL LAPSE RATES DO SUGGEST TRANSITORY CLUSTERS OF ELEVATED THUNDERSTORMS COULD PRODUCE HAIL AS THEY SPREAD TOWARD THE OH VALLEY INTO THE EVENING HOURS. IT/S NOT ENTIRELY CLEAR WHETHER BOUNDARY LAYER HEATING WILL BE SUFFICIENT FOR SFC-BASED CONVECTION ACROSS SRN IA/NRN MO AS WEAK CONVERGENCE AND THE AFOREMENTIONED STRONG CAP SHOULD BE NOTED.

It should be so obvious, until you add a few right wing agendas to the mix. With unheard of blocking patterns, unreal measurable CO2 rises, dwindling water resources world wide, and the poles melting before our eyes; this has to be a leftist farce, signed RightWingAmerica. With China and India's carbon footprint on an unstoppable rise we are but at the tip of the iceberg; which is good, because that's all we're going to have left. I believe there will be a multiplying factor to this where what we believe now may have to be amplified greatly in the very near future. The powers that be are the ones that can enact real change, and they're doing everything in their power not to. Unless a devise is invented to remove an UnGodly amount of CO2 from our atmosphere we are already well beyond the point of no return. All of us with a stake in the future should be outraged.

Despite the lull in activity right now, 2012 lies well above average and is still among the most active years we've seen this decade. In fact, a month ago, 2012 briefly attained record tornado activity with 319 preliminary tornado reports (filtered), breaking the previous record of 317 at the time.

Quoting TropicalAnalystwx13:Despite it being late April, Severe Weather season is dead quiet. We'll have a few chances for isolated severe thunderstorms over the next two weeks, but nothing significant is going to occur through at least the beginning of May.

Weird....

So much for that worst severe season on record everyone was talking about after march 2nd

Despite it being late April, Severe Weather season is dead quiet. We'll have a few chances for isolated severe thunderstorms over the next two weeks, but nothing significant is going to occur through at least the beginning of May.

Quoting VAbeachhurricanes:Since we have been studying climate extensively for only about 50 years or so to be generous. I doubt, we as humans know much about the earths climate as a whole and how it works over long periods of times.

Humans have been studying weather and climate for thousands of years. The trouble has been that western science has not taken the time to listen to that knowledge. A case in point was a scientist visiting the high plains of South America noticed farmers would on a specific day of the year look to the horizen at a specific time on night to see if a constellation was visible or not to determain exactly when to plant. He laughed at them. It wasafter years later and coming to understand the El Nino and La Nina effects that it came to him that indeed those illiterate farmers knew more then he did. That cycle determained when the rains came to that area and at the same time effected the visibility of that specific constellation at that specific day of the year. And the rains were very preditable.If western man had taken time to listen to all those stories about weather and climate that different groups around the world has been pasted down generation after generation, most of which has been lost now, I believe we would have not only far better models of the weather, but have a far greater understanding about climate.As far as where did all that heat go that has been predicted. I think we will all find out sooner then later. Nature has a very bad habit of covering things up until it is too late then things change very fast.An example of that would be all those animals barried in ice with full stomach of healthy vegetation. Maybe the opposite can also happen and we only find out where that heat went when all the ice in the world disappears all at the same time. Unlikely but could be a possibility.